


recovering data ...

by eviscerates



Category: Tron (1982), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Canon Continuation, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-09 22:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4365953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eviscerates/pseuds/eviscerates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>malware has been detected in your software. system monitor TRON has been rewritten. locate and initiate virus override protocol?</p>
            </blockquote>





	recovering data ...

**Author's Note:**

> i love tron (the character) and have always been really emotional about his change into rinzler and general heroism and sacrifice so i thought i'd try and get that across here, as short and stream-of-conciousness-y as it is.
> 
> i haven't seen uprising so if there's canon for that, it's not relevant here. tron: evolution (the game) is very briefly mentioned in passing (the characters of anonymous and abraxas, is it, honestly).

He hit the surface of the Sea before he even realized he had been falling.

_"Flynn!"_

His memory felt warped. Maybe being submerged in water will do that to a program. But no, he doesn't really think that's it - at least not all of it. He knows he should open his eyes, move his arms, try and swim to the surface. He feels himself sinking further, the orange lights on his suit flickering, trying to muster up enough power to keep him from going dark. 

_"Am I still to create the perfect system?"_

Pain. Something akin to agony, if he wanted to use a technical term. Pain was something programs rarely encountered - Menial ones didn't even have programmed pain responses. He'd learned the concept of agony on his own. It felt like every last circuit connection in his body was overheating to dangerous levels, like he was being derezzed from his core out. Voices echoed nearby, but they were in his head, his memory dredging up scenes of his past and playing them out like a fever dream.

_"Yeah...?"_

A quake ran through the water, and on the surface came a flash so bright he thought of the sun Flynn had told him of before. There was a sound like the boom of the loudest bitworks he'd ever heard... 

_"Flynn! Go!"_

Stillness. Overwhelming silence. Dark. 

_A deresolutioned Blackguard to his left. A discarded disc to his right, then two discs. A disc in each hand. Blackguards everywhere. They fell. Flynn was safe. Clu was mad with power. The last guard exploded into pixels at the slice of his discs._

His fingers twitched. His lights went out. He was sinking.

_A second's pause. Hardly any time at all. A second to make sure Flynn was out of danger, there were no more guards, that Anonymous had escaped... Just a second. One second he was Tron, defender of the Grid, protector of his people, and in the next he was... Gone._

He can't remember if he screamed. All there was to remember was searing pain. If he had been lucky, he would have blacked out, gone into sleep mode while it happened, but that second's hesitation proved he wasn't as lucky as he thought. He was awake through all of it, awake to feel Clu's programming ripping through his circuits and wrapping itself around his code and burying itself against every byte inside him to warp him from the purpose he had been created to do. Clu had ripped his purpose away from him and hidden it deep within himself and thrown away the key. He wasn't even allowed to keep his name.

_Every order given was an order followed. Execute the opposition. Capture and repurpose the silent. Make examples. Enforce. Beware the coming war, for you will be a part of what is to come. You made this possible. Thanks to you the perfect system will be achieved._

The ISOs. Abraxas. Repurposing. Troops. The portal. He saw everything. Under his discs, many fell. Sometimes he forgot who he was. Clu's perfect system was at hand.

_"My name is Sam Flynn. I'm not a program."_

He still couldn't open his eyes. It felt like someone had poured molten metal down his throat and let it seep into every corner of his body, weighing him down and pulling him further beneath the still water of the Sea of Simulation. But there was a time and place for everything, and right then was time to move. Move. Move. Get up. Open your eyes. Swim.

_"User."_

Under his helmet, his eyes flew open. He gasped, gulping in an unnecessary breath, fingers twitching and hands clawing the water around him. His insides were burning, his body screaming in protest to sink, go under the waves, let it go. It wasn't his fight.

_"I fight for the Users."_

His lights flickered on. They glowed bright white in the ocean gloom.

_Game over. Try again?_

His head broke the surface of the Sea before he even realized he had been swimming up.


End file.
